


Buried With Our Pasts

by neoqueentitania



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, No Romance, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, will add tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-15 07:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20862284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoqueentitania/pseuds/neoqueentitania
Summary: It's been fifteen years, surely she couldn't have forgotten everything so quickly...After a chance reunion online, Alice returns to her hometown to find her childhood friends again, but something's different now. The memories of her youth are buried deep down, along with the secrets of the events that transpired that fateful summer. But in this town, memories sleep and secrets don't keep.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all - I'm bad at summaries, I know. I'll probably update that later, I'm very sorry!  
Second of all, hi! Thank you for checking out my writing! This is a bit of a different style of fic for me, so I'm interested to see how it turns out.  
This fic is very very loosely inspired by "The Silver Eyes," which I began reading and then never finished. Maybe this fic will be the motivation I need to finish past the third chapter.  
Kudos/comments/shares are appreciated! ♥

The old truck rumbled down uneven smalltown roads, the roads she’d been down so many times before, the roads that had marked the beginning and end of all her summers as a child. The roads she once had burned in painstaking detail into the front of her mind were now hauntingly unfamiliar. Alice gripped the steering wheel tighter as she tried to remember. Tried to remember what it had been like spending time here as a child, tried to remember what she’d been like when she was younger, trying to remember what life had been like before _ the incident._

She’d had friends in this town - Rulid - who she’d spent every day with. They’d played together in meadows and fields, she could remember bringing them lunch each day. There was a tree, too, though she couldn’t place what its significance had been. An odd detail to remember, sure, but one that had obviously been important enough to remember for the past decade and a half.

The days they’d spent together had been some of the happiest in her life.

First, there was Kirito, a goofy and rambunctious young boy with jet black hair that matched midnight onyx eyes. He always seemed to have a goofy grin plastered across his face, and happily blushing cheeks.

By his side was Eugeo. He was a kind and slightly-too-naive counterpart to Kirito, balancing out each other nicely. He had fair blond hair and deep emerald eyes Alice could only compare to the fairy king she’d read about in a book when she was young.

Those were the two she’d been closest to, but there were others she could vaguely remember, like Ronye and Tiese, who Alice would describe as close acquaintances. They’d been friends to the boys more than they had been to her, though they were friendly with each other. Alice couldn’t remember much of them before she’d moved.

As Alice remembered more of her childhood, her breath suddenly hitched in her throat as she remembered someone she’d entirely forgotten about the existence of, someone who hadn’t been as much of an integral part of their group as the others had been, but she’d been there. 

A few years older than the rest of them, Quinella had always slightly intimidated Alice. She held herself with all of the grace and composure an eleven-year-old could have. She would have been sweet if she hadn’t been so mournfully serious, always seeming to have been there, but missing something. Or perhaps she’d been searching for a part of herself that had never been there in the first place, Alice wasn’t quite sure. She just knew that there had always been something strange about her, that she was never quite able to pinpoint.

What had happened to them? Now, in the driver’s seat of her old beaten up truck, Alice could’ve sworn she was able to remember each freckle that dotted Kirito’s face, or every melodic pitch in Eugeo’s giggle. 

Suddenly her phone rang through the audio system in her car. She answered it, turning her gaze back to the road again.

“Hey, uh, Alice, right?” asked a voice that was so warmly familiar.

Alice broke into a wide grin, barely able to stop herself from giggling with the excitement of a lovestruck schoolgirl.

“Eugeo?” she asked, “It’s been too long! How have you been?”

“Aha, I knew this was the right number!” He chuckled down the phone line, “I’ve been good! How have you been yourself? None of us have heard from you in years!”

“I’m doing okay,” she sighed in contentment, “but I feel terrible for just leaving you all like I did-”

“Don’t sweat it, we’re just glad you’re back in town. The others can’t wait to see you again, what time are you getting here?”

“I just drove into town, I’m passing the markets now. I’ll be about half an hour!”

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Alice replied, voice laced with sarcasm, “It’s a small town, if I get lost I only have to walk half an hour until I reach the other side. I’ll be fine, Eugeo.”

The line fell silent for a few moments, and Alice briefly wondered if she’d lost connection until she heard a blissful sigh from Eugeo.

“You don’t know how nice it feels to hear you say my name again,” he said, “it sounds much better now than the scolding tone you always used when we were kids,”

The pair laughed as they continued to reminisce as Alice drove down winding roads, the path becoming more recognisable the further she got. But there was something different this time. The town had changed. She couldn’t figure out what had changed, but something had changed ever so subtly since the last time she’d been here. 

Of course, the last time she’d been here had been when she was a child, fifteen years ago, back when the world was small, the days were long, and innocence was everywhere. Those days were long gone now, replaced by nights of violent nightmares, mascara-black tear stains, and broken promises.

Oh, so many broken promises.

But none of that mattered now. She was here, and she was alive, and her past was so long behind her. The secrets of that final summer had been sealed away and buried, never to be dug up or uncovered by the hands of those she didn’t trust with them. 

Would she ever trust anybody with them?

“Alice? You still with me?”

Eugeo’s voice cut through her thoughts. She took a shaky breath, then nodded, though he couldn't see.

“I’m here, I see the tree,” she told him, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She ended the phone call, stuffing phone back into her jacket pocket. She exhaled deeply, then stepped out of the car, slamming the door shut with an unsatisfying thud.

It was a new beginning, a new chapter, and she intended to leave the past buried where it belonged. Forever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice, Eugeo and Kirito talk about where their friends had ended up after fifteen years, but Alice keeps her past tightly locked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *crawls out of hole, updates one fic, then hibernates for three months*  
Thanks for sticking with me and my slow updates. It means a lot to me.

Alice walked towards the old cedar tree, waving to her group of friends. This was it, the day she’d been anticipating since the day she’d left. Would she even recognise them? Would they recognise her? She frowned at the thought of growing apart from her best friends, though she knew that was likely what had already happened. Too much time had passed for it not to have happened. Yet they still stood just a bit away from that old tree waiting for her like they’d done when they were kids.

“Hey!” She greeted. 

She cringed. That was such an awkward way to greet them, so casual, too casual. They were seeing each other for the first time in years, and she’d said “hey” as if they’d seen each other the week before. Was the entire trip going to be this awkward? Would they even talk at all without it feeling forced?

They looked older. Eugeo no longer had the innocent eyes she’d loved so much as a child, Kirito looked worlds away from the goofy kid she’d once known. They’d aged in more than a physical sense, time wearing down more than just their bodies. Their mouths smiled, but their eyes looked weary and tired. 

“Hey, long time no see,” Kirito grinned, shaking her hand. 

Eugeo extended his hand to hers, too, smiling warmly at her. His grip was stronger than when they’d been kids, yet his hand seemed fragile, more delicate.

“I’m really glad you could make it,” he told her. His voice seemed softer in person than it had on the phone, like he was nervous about something. Alice could understand, she supposed anyone would be nervous meeting their friend again after so long.

The trio made their way to the tree’s base, sitting on the thick roots like they’d done when they were children. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves, and Alice pulled her flannel shirt tighter over her shoulders to protect herself from the breeze. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree, the old bark digging into her back uncomfortably. The boys adjusted themselves on the roots, too, Kirito cursing as a small branch stuck into his thigh.

“So,” Alice turned her head to the boys, “what happened to everyone while I was gone?”

Kirito shrugged and turned to Eugeo. Of course, he still relied on Eugeo to answer everything. Typical.

“Well…”

Eugeo began to recount what had become of their friend group, while Alice tried to recall anything that could help her remember when she was young.

Tiese had become a teacher at a local academy that she had once attended as a student years before. She was popular with students and teachers alike, which Alice wasn’t surprised by. She’d always seemed easy to get along with, it was no wonder she’d taken up teaching.

Ronye had enrolled in a prestigious university, and was, therefore, living a few hours away in the city. Alice could vaguely remember hearing Eugeo mention that when they’d spoken online a few months earlier. She briefly wondered if Ronye would be able to visit that week, or if the school would be keeping her too busy.

“They’re doing really well, I’m proud of them,” Eugeo grinned. 

Kirito rolled his eyes playfully, “You say that about everybody from this place,” he sighed, “I guess we have low expectations considering none of us ever expected to leave this stupid town.”

Alice began to feel guilty. They’d all been daydreaming of an escape from their humdrum lives, and yet she was the one who’d left. Left them far, far behind.

It wasn’t her choice. If it had been up to her, she would have stayed put right there beside them for the rest of her life. These two were her brothers, the family she’d never asked for but had been lucky enough to find anyway. She never wanted to leave them. Not like that.

“Hey, what about that other chick we knew?” Kirito asked, snapping Alice from her thoughts. 

Eugeo thought for a moment, pouting his lip in concentration.

“Oh, you mean Quinella?” Alice asked. 

The other two fell quiet, looking at her in curiosity and something she couldn’t recognise, like they couldn’t understand what she’d just said. It was like they’d entirely spaced out from their conversation.

“Did I say something wrong?” She asked nervously.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Eugeo assured her, before looking off into the distance in thought.

“She moved out of town a few months after you did,” he recalled, looking at Alice intently as if the sight of her would help him remember.

“Didn’t she have a kid or something?” Kirito asked, leaning back and falling off the root he was sitting on. He stood back up and leant against the trunk, brushing a leaf from his hair as he did.

Alice’s eyes widened in surprise, “I didn’t know she was seeing anybody…” she mumbled.

“She wasn’t,” Kirito’s voice took on an annoyed tone, “I heard she had a thing for some guy and he dipped when she got pregnant. But that’s just a rumour.”

Eugeo sighed and rolled his eyes.

“It isn’t nice to gossip,” He scolded. Before Kirito could protest, he turned back to Alice, “Alice, what have you been up to all these years? I’m curious.”

Alice laughed a little, tugging at her sleeve.

“Honestly? Nothing worth talking about.” She shrugged. In truth, she didn’t want to talk about what she’d been doing all this time, didn’t want to burden them, or herself. She’d buried it all, she didn’t want to dig it up again.

“I guess,” she sighed, relenting to Kirito’s endless pestering for information, “I’m in my first year of college, studying law. I guess that’s the only interesting thing that’s happened.”

The boys congratulated her on getting into college, while she bit her lip in guilt. She was making something of herself, far away from this town and everything that lied within it. That was what she wanted, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super happy with this chapter, but it's more of a filler to bring the next chapter here anyway. As I wrote the summary for this, I actually worked out a fantastic final line AND how I want to end the fic! Unfortunately, I still have no idea what to do in until then. I'm making all of this up as I go along. Planning? Never heard of her.  
But for real, thanks for reading this fic. It's kinda my baby right now. I still love my other fics like Tattoo (PART TWO!), More Than Just A Fling and *looks at smudged writing on hand* Tokyo Mew AU, but this fic means a lot to me.   
I'll save the long, rambling notes, but that you for reading it. Love y'all ♥


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice visits her childhood home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry this is so late; I have no explanation for myself.

Alice pulled her car into an overgrown driveway, trees and bushes covering the old stone, a large house looming ominously before her as she parked, the entire atmosphere sending a chill down her spine despite the warm weather.

She sat in the driver’s seat for a moment too long before she slowly opened the door and climbed out of the car, tugging at the open plaid flannel that hung loosely over her shoulders, the dark blue and black contrasting against the white tank top beneath it. Maybe white wasn’t the best choice of colour to wear, given how dusty and dirty she could assume everything inside the house would be. After all, it hadn’t been disturbed in years.

She began her walk up the stone path to the dark wooden deck, almost-playfully jumping over the creaking step she could still remember from her childhood. She could remember always forgetting to avoid it, the creak under her then-light feet which would wake her parents as she tried to leave the house early in the mornings to meet her friends. She never remembered what happened after they caught her, though, didn’t want to remember.

Without realising, she gripped the key tighter between her fingers, looking back quickly over her shoulders in the direction she’d come from. Nobody was there, she knew there wouldn’t be. There was never anyone there when she’d taken backwards glances each time she’d entered the house years before. But she always checked, fearful of the day she let familiar nostalgia trick her into letting her guard down.

Rulid wasn’t the town you could let your guard down in.

The key needed to be jammed into the lock and the doorknob didn’t turn easily, the door groaning on old hinges as Alice pressed her body against it to force it open, neglect obvious as the chipped paint and splintered wood poked at her side.

But at last, the door opened, and Alice took an apprehensive step inside, heaving combat boots weighing down on most-likely already fragile wooden floors.

The first thing she noticed was the dust, heavy in the air and thick on her lungs when she took a shaky breath in, having laid undisturbed since God only knew when. It was suffocating.

The next thing she noticed was the window above the staircase. It was open, the curtain blowing in the dull breeze. She hated to think what kind of bugs could have crawled in through it since the last time someone had opened it.

She explored the ground floor of the house, consisting of a small kitchen, an even smaller dining room, a quaint sitting room and the entry hallway where the staircase was, intimidating and discomfitingly familiar as everything else in the house. Dust coated everything, light streaming in through locked windows, creaky floorboards far more worn down than they had been two decades prior. The downstairs was clear.

The upstairs, however, she was afraid to explore, especially on her own. She couldn’t name the feeling she got at the thought of going up the staircase and into the small, dark rooms on her own, but it made her hair stand on end.

Deciding against scaring herself more than she already was, she turned and made her way back to her car, locking the door again behind her, wary of every step she made in case she disturbed more memories. She didn’t want any of them, not now, not when she’d come so far to forget them.

“Hey, uh, Eugeo, I don’t know when you’ll hear this, but can you call me back when you get a chance? I… I really don’t want to stay here tonight, I’m sorry. Just… Call me back soon, ‘kay?”

She tucked her phone back into her backpack, throwing it onto the seat and pulling out of the driveway far more eagerly than she’d arrived. She couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling in her gut that something wasn’t right in that house anymore, that it had changed since she’d last been there. That someone or something had changed it so subtly that it was familiar but dangerously new in the tiniest of ways, enough to trap her into a sense of security.

That was the one feeling she knew she wouldn’t experience back in this town.

This town was the place she felt least secure, always looking over her shoulder, always questioning what she felt and saw, knowing too well what happened when someone got too comfortable within the town, knowing nothing good came from getting too secure in a town where secrets had their ways of getting out and anger festered in the soil they built their lives on.

This town had memories, memories she had tried to forget. Memories that had come flooding back to her as soon as she opened the door of that old house. Memories of her parents, laughter, games that lasted well into the evening, long hikes with her friends, Kirito and Eugeo devouring her homemade lunches, Kirito’s goofy grin, Eugeo’s mischievous side that only came out when Kirito got them in trouble, the other friend’s she’d had in this town - the ones she couldn’t remember, the ones something was forcing her to not remember.

But the memories that came after were far worse. Screaming, crying, that sick feeling of confusion but knowing something was wrong and something had changed yet not knowing quite what it was. The brief conversation that followed the events of that day, the panic, the trauma, the days that blurred together until that summer had ended. The flowers, oh God the flowers, the box she’d never understood, the endless questions she asked without answers or explanations.

She didn’t realise how blurred her eyes had become from tears until she blinked them back, focusing on the road again, grip tightening on the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, pushing down thoughts she hadn’t thought in years, memories of a summer she’d buried, a past she’d buried. Everything was buried.

Wasn’t it?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice discusses her childhood home with Eugeo, Kirito and... Quinella?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone help Alice get a new car it took her nine months to drive to this damn diner-
> 
> Yeah, this is so late. Basically... I have no excuses, I suck at updating this thing, but I wanna get better. Old hyperfixations die hard apparantly.

Alice burst into the doors of the diner, hands shaking while she scanned around for her friends. Eugeo had said they’d all meet her there. She wasn’t early, so where were they? She was about to panic - more than she already was - when she spotted a familiar face walking out of the arcade, a black-haired young man following after him with a large plush bunny under his arm.

“Eu-”

Alice was interrupted by an employee bumping into her. The employee turned around too late, stumbling backwards a couple of steps.

“I’m so sorry!” Alice gasped, asking if the girl was alright and apologising once more.

“I’m okay, I wasn’t looking where I was going, I’m so sorry!”

Alice looked at her for just a moment too long for it to be comfortable. She looked familiar, but Alice couldn’t place why. Her long brunette hair was tied in a ponytail on top of her head, her dark, hauntingly familiar eyes blinked a few times in embarrassment before she hurried off to the kitchen again, more careful with her steps than the time before.

Did Alice know her? She looked maybe a few years older than her, so it wasn’t entirely improbable that they’d played together when they were young. She couldn’t remember seeing her, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t. After all, she couldn’t be sure of what she had and hadn’t seen or had or hadn’t met. Her mind was playing tricks on her far too often these days.

“Yo, Alice!” Kirito waved his free arm above his head to get her attention, “Look at what I won! Look at him, isn’t he beautiful? I’m so smart.”

“I won him,” Eugeo sighed as the pair walked over to Alice.

She hesitated, looking over her shoulder towards the door before she followed them to a seat. She was far too paranoid for her own good. Maybe being away from Rulid truly had been for the better.

The trio ordered food - Kirito still had his childhood favourite pizza committed to memory, which Alice found endearing - and started to reminisce once more. Several topics passed in a blur of conversation that Alice tried to nod politely through, disguising that she truly couldn’t recall a single thing the boys were talking about.

“Hey, how’s your uncle?” Kirito asked as he lovingly stroked the top of his bunny’s head, covered in a deep purple fur. It was an odd little thing, and it smelled old and mouldy. To be fair, so did most of the things in Rulid - people included.

“Oh, Uncle Bercouli?” Alice asked, a small smile appearing on her face, “He’s okay! He’s nervous about me being here, though. Ironic, considering he gave me the key to the old house. I guess h-”

“No way! You have the key to your house?”

Kirito practically leapt out of his seat and Eugeo had to hush him. The boy settled down again, eagerly leaning in to listen to everything his friend had to say, begging her to tell him everything about the house and how it was after all the years that had passed.

“Well, nothing’s really changed,” Alice admitted, pausing in thought, “I suppose it’s a lot dustier than I remember it being, but that’s obvious. It looks so neglected now, it’s… unsettling. Like…”

She snapped her fingers together, trying to think of a word that would fit the house. Kirito offered one for her.

“Haunted?”

“Kirito, knock it off with the ghost stories,” Eugeo scolded, “The poor girl’s probably already spooked being back in that old house for the first time in years, we don’t need to hear about ghosts and ghouls right now.”

“Aha, thanks…” Alice swallowed a lump in her throat before continuing, “It’s so weird, I realised it would be old by now, but I didn’t expect it to be so… frozen? Like, everything’s just as we left it that day - at least, from what I remember. I expected it to have been changed.”

“You mean your uncle never moved things while he was there?” Eugeo asked curiously.

The waitress from earlier brought their meals to them, setting them down on the table. When she reached Alice, they exchanged glances again.

“Sorry for the wait,” the brunette apologised.

“It’s absolutely fine…” Alice checked her nametag, “Sortiliena?”

Why did that name sound familiar? Surely there weren’t so many people with the name that Alice had met one before. Was she certain that she’d not met her before? She wasn’t certain of anything anymore.

“Enjoy the food!” Sortiliena walked away back to the kitchen, and the table resumed their conversation.

“Uncle Bercouli never visited the house after I left, why would he need to? Why, did you see him there or something?”

Kirito and Eugeo exchanged glances Alice couldn’t read before they started eating again, Kirito mumbling through a mouthful of pizza.

“I thought- mmpf… I thought that I saw him there a few times over the years. Didn’t he move back there for a while, maybe two years ago or so?”

Alice thought, trying her hardest to remember the house. Her uncle came and took her early one morning, promising they’d come back later, but they never had. Over the years, Alice had grown to stop asking about the house, and for a while, she was convinced she’d imagined the whole thing. At least, until she’d found Eugeo again and had begged him for the key to the house so she could stay there in town.

Her memories of her childhood were few and far between, but she was absolutely certain she’d never known Bercouli to visit Rulid again.

“No, you must be mistaken with someone else. I don’t know what happened there after I left, but it had nothing to do with Uncle Bercouli.”

“Maybe I’m confused,” Kirito shrugged, stuffing another slice of pizza into his mouth.

“I can’t believe that you never managed to focus a single class in school, but you could focus on my house for more than a decade.” Alice laughed as she took a bite of her own pizza.

“Kirito finally focused on something? I’m impressed.”

Alice whipped her head around at the new voice, almost choking on her food when she saw the woman standing behind them.

Quinella. She was older now, a little more mature, and the toddler on her hip was a new addition, but it was unmistakably her. Her lilac hair was longer now, cascading down her back until it reached just below her knees in voluminous waves. She seemed to have finally outgrown the white sundresses and rainboots she’d worn every day as a child, now dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a black tank top sporting the name of a whiskey brand Alice hated.

The toddler looked nothing like her mother, her light brown hair was pulled in two pigtails on the side of her head and Quinella had dressed her in a pair of dark denim overalls with a burgundy cardigan over top of them. Alice assumed her missing shoe was somewhere in Quinella’s large handbag.

“Quinella?”

Alice stood from her seat in the booth to walk over to her, the boys following close behind her. Eugeo was the first to give their old friend a hug, burying his face into her shoulder.

“It’s been too long, how are you? And how’s this little cherub?”

Quinella snorted, “This little cherub threw up on my nice shirt on the car ride over here, so I had to change into this one. I’m well, how are all of you?”

“We’re fine,” Kirito waved at the little girl, “I hope we’re not bothering you by inviting you out here.”

“It’s fine, I’ve missed the old place,” Quinella looked around as if trying to gather all the nostalgia the diner could hold for her, “This feels just like when we were kids, huh? I mean, except for this one-” She bounced the girl on her hip, “-I guess she’s a little different. I haven’t even been here since before she was born.”

“Who is she, by the way?” Alice asked quietly. Her friends looked at her like she’d asked the most obvious question in the world before Quinella laughed lightly - as melodic and sweet as Alice remembered her laugh to be - and held the toddler’s hand out towards the blonde.

“Alice, meet Cardinal. Cardinal, meet Alice. This is Mommy’s friend from when she was a little girl! So, this is kinda your aunty Alice!”

Alice lightly shook the girl’s hand before she dropped it, smiling awkwardly. She never was one for kids. She had a younger sister she adored, but she couldn’t remember much of her toddler years. They seemed fragile, Alice was afraid she’d break her.

“Well, do you wanna order something? We were just talking about Alice’s old house,” Kirito sat back at the booth, Eugeo and the girls following behind him and getting comfortable. Quinella ordered herself a mini pizza, then started inquiring about their conversation.

“So... “ Quinella looked up at the ceiling for a moment as she tried to set the overload of information straight, “If I’m understanding this right… Alice’s old house is possessed or something?”

“Quinella!”

Alice lightly slapped her arm as the girl laughed loudly, attracting the attention of half the diner. Alice sunk down in her seat. 

“I’m kidding!” She raised her hands above her head, still chuckling, “So Alice is afraid of her own house, and nobody’s touched the thing since she left town?”

“Basically.” Alice sighed.

The group began half-jokingly theorising about the house. Kirito suggested it was haunted, while Eugeo said Alice’s uncle had probably stopped by the house to check in occasionally while Alice was at school or on her short holidays elsewhere. Quinella thought out loud that there might have been someone else with the key who came to do maintenance, but Alice shut the idea down quickly by reminding them of the house’s state of disrepair.

“I can’t believe nobody’s changed the lock all these years,” Alice mumbled to herself, thinking out loud more than looking for a response.

“Is there really a need to, though?” Quinella asked, swirling her coffee around the bottom of her cup, “I mean, think about it, it’s an old house near the edge of town and half of us thought it was torn down or something. Besides, you saw the car your old man used to ride around in, it’s not exactly motivation to rob the place-”

“But someone did,” Alice said. 

Her friends looked at her quizically, all to varying degrees of judgement and disbelief. Could she blame them for thinking she was lying? Quinella was right, there was nothing to suggest her family’s wealth, and as far as anyone in the town knew, the house was demolished after her father had passed.

“What do you mean someone robbed you?” Eugeo asked.

Alice shook her head, trying to form a sentence. What did she mean? There was nothing to convince her that something had been taken. Everything had been in place, the furniture, the tattered curtains, the-

“The doll!” Alice gasped, “I had a doll, I can’t remember her name, but she was always with me, I carried her everywhere. I remember when I was ta- I remember the day that my uncle and I left, I left her sitting on the stairwell, she was on the bottom step because I didn’t want her to fall and hurt herself. I left her there and my uncle said we’d come back for her, but we never did.”

“Maybe it just fell somewhere? We can go look for it if you’re really that worried,” Kirito suggested, folding his napkin into a small paper aeroplane shape.

“She couldn’t have fallen, Kirito, there was nothing to push her, and even if she did, she was on the bottom step, she couldn’t have rolled more than a few inches away. She should still be there, but she isn’t,”

“We’ll go look,” Eugeo said, standing up. As he did, Kirito threw the napkin at him, hitting him in the chest. The blond took the napkin from where it fell on the table and placed it in his shirt pocket, “I’ll drive, Kirito can sit in the back since he wants to behave like a child,”

The group stood up from the table and Kirito went to pay the bill, an attempt at a peace offering, even though everyone knew Eugeo wasn’t actually mad in the slightest. It was almost painful for Alice to watch, the boys fell so quickly into their old routine and she still felt like an outsider of her own life. From what she had seen online, everyone she had grown up with had either stayed in touch or had met back up later in life as if they’d never been apart. She felt like the only person who couldn’t fit back into Rulid, like there was some part of her mind that forced her out of the memories she had here, trying to remove her from everything, trying to distance her from everything, as if she was never supposed to be there.

Maybe she’d never truly been there at all.

“Oh, Eugeo could you watch her for a second? I need to go to the restroom really quickly,” Quinella lifted Cardinal into Eugeo’s arms, then turned to Alice, “Come on, I need to borrow something from your bag. That time of the month,”

Alice took her bag from the seat, eyeing Quinella suspiciously, but she followed her to the ladies’ room regardless, telling Eugeo they wouldn’t be too long and asking him to keep an eye on Cardinal while they were gone - Eugeo protested he was great at looking after children, Cardinal poked him in the eye as a response.

They reached the restroom and Alice unzipped her bag ready to find one of the - products - she kept in there when Quinella grabbed her wrist. It wasn’t too tight where it hurt, but it was firm. Alice snapped her head up to look at her, finding her face fallen and eyes wet. Had she been crying before in the diner? 

“Alice, I know you feel it too,” Her voice was quiet, shaky.

“Um…”

“Like you don’t belong here,” She explained, “Like… We left this town, this isn’t our town anymore, we’re outsiders, we’re unwelcome,”

“Oh,” Alice exhaled, and nodded slowly, “Yeah, I’ve felt like that since I got back. It feels like the town’s rejecting me- not the people, obviously, but the town itself. It feels like it’s trying to force me out,”

“Do you get this sense of dread in the pit of your stomach?” Quinella asked, loosening her grip of the blonde’s wrist.

“A little, especially by my house. It felt weird there, it wasn’t like anything I can describe,”

“Then we have to go back there,”

“What?”

“We’ll go back to your house, with Kirito and Eugeo, and we can figure out what’s going on here. Because this town’s hiding something, something huge.”

“You’ve been watching too many horror movies,”

“No! I’m serious! I know you feel the same,”

Alice looked down at the ground, almost ashamed. Because she was right, she did feel the same, and part of her did want to go back and explore the house, to find the doll, to work out exactly what was going on with how the town made her feel - why it made her feel that way. 

It was a ridiculous plan, careless and dangerous and reckless. They could get hurt or killed in that house far too easily - they could get hurt or killed in the entire town far too easily. There were shadows in this town that would stop at nothing to drag them into the darkness too. The house itself was a deathtrap, abandoned and broken. There was nothing to say they wouldn’t be killed by falling down the staircase, or the roof caving in, the floorboards breaking beneath them or a ceiling beam nobody can prove was pushed by someone lurking just out of sight.

It was an almost certain death-sentence and Alice knew nothing good would come from it.

“Okay, I’m in.”


End file.
